


Impulsive/Spontaneous

by gringle



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: #GiveLanceAThing2k17, Angst, Concussions, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Platonic VLD Week, Post Season 2, Season 2 spoilers, Team as Family, Vomiting, briefly, competent lance, its my special son being special, like two fursona jokes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-04
Updated: 2017-03-04
Packaged: 2018-09-28 06:12:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10076153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gringle/pseuds/gringle
Summary: Lance and Allura start becoming close. Also Lance gets a new job.Part of Platonic VLD week: Day 6 Injury/Healinghttp://platonicvldweek.tumblr.com/post/156065779827/announcing-platonic-vld-week-about-rules





	

**Author's Note:**

> I was going to make it a pretty quick story, but my mind demanded that I needed to add about 3,000 words of competent!Lance before I got to anything related to the prompt, but I scrapped together a pay-off in the end! (and yes, that’s exactly why I’m so late. PS: no edits we write once and die like losers)
> 
> Edit: I edited it. I cleaned up some grammatical errors and added a few bits to make it flow better. wooo!
> 
> Anyway, here's my first Voltron fanfic! Hope you all enjoy! Comments would be lovely <3

The two people most capable of handling diplomatic relations were, without a doubt, Allura and Lance. “Business Lance”, as Hunk and Pidge have taken to calling him, really came out while the four of them were scouring the universe for Shiro. 

Everyone had been helping in their own way. Allura was working tirelessly with the castle, aligning her quintessence as often as she was physically able to operate the sensors for his energy signature. Pidge and Hunk were running experiments with the Black lion, much to its chagrin, trying to find ways to ‘ping’ Shiro through his bond to the lion like Zarkon had done. Coran poured over archives about the Lion’s histories and their magical mishaps that could point towards some sort of explanation of what happened. Keith worked with the Blade of Marmora and their vast informant network to keep an eye on prisoner routes, which they liberated anyway even if they didn’t dig up the information they wanted. 

Lance, however, with his lack of technical prowess or magical connections or the ability to read Altean or full access to a secret resistance, decided that the best he could really do was ask around. He’d slip out of the castle for a few hours whenever they were near a planet that was capable of space travel (he did NOT want to scare aliens into worshiping a flying blue lion and a human who couldn’t even order at a bar, as cool at that may seem in his brain) and just... started talking and asking around. Quite a few aliens ended up recognizing him from their battles with Zarkon, and with only a little flattery from some eager-eyed aliens, he started telling the stories of their adventures. 

He’d launch into how five humans from a planet that couldn’t even leave their own solar system discovered a lion of Voltron, and that he was selected to pilot it (he would often get distracted and just chat sweet nonsense about Blue, but dang it, he loved Blue so much!). He’d lead his enraptured audience through tales of the five of them working together to take out Galran outposts, surviving invasions on the castle, fighting Zarkon and living to tell the tale, getting separated, coming back together and fighting the Empire again and finally succeeding in taking out Zarkon. He had always been good at telling stories to his younger siblings, but he felt a bit of pride in himself that he could gather an audience of hundreds or more on his better days.

It almost always ended up with cheers and laughs. He’d show off Blue, of course. It was the best lion, after all, and he could feel its soft energy glow with pride as people prodded its metal legs in curiosity, as kids climbed on what they could, as people came to pat its snout in reverence. Lance would stay for as long as he was comfortable with, talking with town elders or metropolis mayors or kings or communication center generals. He’d find whoever could potentially have a clue and march right up to them. Being a Paladin of Voltron started to mean something again once they publicly fought the Galran empire, and any group of people who wanted to be on their side were quick to help search for Shiro however they could (once Lance explained that “Yes, Voltron is still functional even with Shiro missing and yes, we’re still fighting. We just want our friend back, thanks”). Lance would sometimes get a tip or two, a whisper tucked away in the universe, but he usually ended up empty-handed.

Lance would leave eventually, but not without giving out a communication device that would directly contact the castle-ship. Pidge had already cleared them for use since they could, at most, be used to find the energy signature of the Castle, but Allura was quick to explain that the Druids were most likely already aware of what Altean energy felt like, thanks to Haggar. He put a stockpile of the functional ones in Blue’s storage compartments, and he left one for every leader of a planet or for whoever could mobilize troops or whoever could make the call to utilize a distress signal.

When Zarkon fell at the hands of Voltron and Lotor replaced him, planets upon planets started cropping up resistances. The Voltron team started organizing their efforts, and the team was scrambling to help highest priority planets with death knocking at their doors, but the team knew that not every planet could be saved. They couldn’t stretch that thin, realistically, and accomplish anything. Lotor seemed happy to separate crises in order to scatter Voltron’s attention, and one day, Lance had a light bulb moment.

“That’s it!” He gasped, his scowl morphing into a grin. “Cover for me!” Lance shouted into the comms. The Blue lion peeled away from the battle, using a quick dodge maneuver to escape the flying drones and hiding behind a rock structure before Lance unstrapped his harness, leaving his pilot chair. Anyone glancing at the video screen started shouting for him, distressed that they were a lion down for even a few precious seconds.

“Lance!”

“What are you doing?!”

“Lance, buddy, what’s happening?”

“I’ve lost visual on his Lion, too.”

“Lance, where are you?!”

Lance’s form popped back into existence, strapping back on his harness while affixing a communication device to his dashboard. “Guys, I’ve got a plan! Just give me a second.”

Allura and Keith were trying their best to chew him out for abandoning his job and scaring the life out of them, but Lance muted the incoming audio from the lions and let them listen in to the call was making.

It went through after just a moment. “Hey, Ch’talke! Long time, no hear! How’s the hatchery?” Lance called into the communication device a little loudly, just so he could be heard over the gunfire he was returning to the Galran fleet.

“Lance! It’s lovely to hear your voice again!” Someone called back, though it sounded a bit like rocks going through a dryer. “The hatchery is thriving this season, thank you for asking. May I ask why you called?”

“Well, Ch’tal? Voltron is in a bit of a bind, and we’re stretched thin. One of my friends, the Red lion, is protecting a planet near your second colony. Do you have any manpower you could spare? I could send you some coordinates.”

“My, Lance! We’d be honored to serve and fight the good fight!”

“Thanks, my man! I’ll have Coran send you the info!”

There was a sharp gasp and an excited rumbling. “The Altean engineer? The man wise beyond years?!”

Lance laughed at that. “He really is great, isn’t he? Hold on, I’ll connect you two so you can fawn over him.”

“The Berat’s Breath be with you,” he called with a goodbye wave as Lance transferred the communication’s information to Coran. 

With a smug grin, Lance opened up the audio to the four other Paladins, only to be met with silence. 

“You’re welcome.”

And really, after that, Lance handled most of the non-Galran, resistance-free, unorganized planetary communications. He picked up names pretty quickly, though sometimes his tongue was too limited to properly pay respect to the culture and language. Thankfully, most space-faring people were pretty understanding about that in general, so worked out pretty well. Lance backtracked a bit, with Allura’s help, in order to gift previous planets access to Voltron in a dire emergency (while also catching up with them a bit). Lance categorized any planet who could operate a space combat and had them on an ‘emergency backup’ basis, as a defense measure instead of an offensive force. Lance was more than proud of it, keeping his own secrets and coming up with his own sort of safety net for information and spies to help out. It almost felt like he was doing something productive for the team.

In the end, though, Allura was the one that found Shiro. He was being held hostage by Haggar herself, and, through magical means that Lance didn’t really get, Allura used the Druid’s quintessence against her to find that out. Lance wasn’t one hundred percent sure it wasn’t a trap, but everyone was too excited.

“Allura, hope you don’t mind borrowing Red one last time.” Keith said, donning the black paladin armor for what they hope would be the last time. 

“The paladin’s armor was never something I could have tolerated for long stretches of time, anyway.” Allura quipped back. She had really slipped into her role as a fellow warrior instead of their boss. Strange as it was, Lance can’t clearly remember the last time she’d been addressed as “Princess” by any of the humans. 

Lance guessed it really wasn’t that strange. She’d be working with Keith side-by-side for a couple of months now, and they’re closer. Allura was closer to all of them, technically, since the five of them had to mind-meld a couple of times to help Allura fit in with Red and Voltron. They were on a bit more equal footing, and Lance did his best to ignore the twist in his gut at the thought of the two of them working alone with just each other for company. He was beginning to think that Allura really didn't care much for his company, which is a bad thought to have about one seventh of a castle's residents and a current arm of Voltron.

“Okay, so I ran some sensors through their tech one last time to double check for any alterations to their operator system.” Pidge started off, not really waiting for an invitation. “Seems like the closed circuit system even has periodic password updates. I’ll have to get into the system manually to send you all the right bypass codes.”

Right. Step one was find Shiro. Step two was destroy the base. 

“Allura and I can make steady headway in anyway-,” Keith added in, raising his hand briefly to indicate his Galra blood. “-while you guys work towards step two.”

“If we get out of sync, or if we miscalculate how long you two take after we set the timer for the bomb, all three of you could die.” Hunk stepped in, a little frantic with the lack of planning in step two.

“Then we won’t waste time.” Keith said. His face was grimly determined, and he punctuated his statement with a final placement of the black helmet on his head. His eyes glinted behind the protective screen. “This may be our only chance to get Shiro back and to make significant damage to the Druid’s operations. We can’t make mistakes. Coran,” Keith called into the communication system. “How’s that bomb?”

“It’s going along quite nicely for one ton of unstable nuclear elements packed into twelve neat containers.” Coran’s chipper voice replied through the castle speakers. 

“And we’re sure that Lance’s sonic cannon is the only thing that can activate them aside from the internal detonator?” Allura asked. That was Hunk’s idea, to make sure that the Druids didn’t have perfect access to free energy they could use to fuel their magic. 

“Double checked a dud this morning!” Coran said.

Allura nodded. “Alright. We’ll have Pidg-”

Hold on. “Keith, Allura, wait.” Lance jumped in quickly before everyone left to their stations. “Can you open a jump before we go?” Everybody paused, as though they just remembered that Lance was present.

“Yes, but why?” Her face pinched in confusion.

“I just had an idea, but bear with me.” Lance pulled out a communicator device, much larger and more advanced than the others. Lance asked Pidge to do a couple of modifications a while back, and this ‘Space PDA’ was basically the hub of Lance’s inter-universal communication. 

It took less than twenty seconds before the communicator connected. “Hey, Whodgho? You there?” Lance spoke to what looks like an entirely black screen. 

“We are present. What is it you wish for, Blue Paladin of Voltron?” The black screen replied.

“How would you like to do a favor for the Defenders of the Universe? Though, I will warn that it’s a bit on the ‘extremely dangerous’ side.” 

Apparently the black screen was, in fact, a video of a ten-foot tall beast that is almost entirely invisible to many light-perceiving mechanisms, including cameras, human eyes, and infrared beams. 

Pidge was pissed off to no end.

“Why would you keep an invisable killing machine a SECRET?!” She shouted, her glasses hiding just how furious she was, though the reflective glint always made Lance cower a bit.

“Because!” Lance cried, flinching away from the electrically charged bayard. “They might have been busy with the Surfeit process they have to go through every year. I’m just glad they picked up!”

“Lance, that was clever of you.” Allura praised, though Keith’s tapping foot of impatience meant he was almost done waiting for action to happen. “Do you think we should gather more reinforcements from these, um, friends of yours?”

Lance paused. It was a bit jarring for Allura of all people to ask for his advice, but he took it in stride and thought it though. 

“No, I don’t think so. If we ask for a larger scale of assistance against the Druids, then it’ll be a slaughterhouse for us. It wouldn’t be worth the loss. At least we can keep track of Whodgho.” He smiled a bit. “Well, not literally.”

Hunk snorted, bumping shoulders with Lance. “Nice one, dude.” 

Lance grinned a bit, and he felt like he finally clicked into place with them.

In the end, the ‘blowing up the whole base and saving Shiro and everybody coming out alive and defeating the druids and stealing all the information we need to take down Lotor’ plan only worked about fifty percent. Shiro’s back, nobody on their side died, and Pidge got her hands on some very top secret research files, but the Druid’s back up plan included teleporting away with all of the quintessence and their most prized research items. 

At least the operation was a battle in their favor, and when Lance passed the exciting news on to all of the friends and allies he made along the way, his communicator exploded with video messages of congratulations and kind words (and Lance selfishly kept them to himself because, while all of them were nothing but sweet, a lot of the aliens gave Lance the credit for everything, which is both flattering and guilt inducing because that is way too many aliens to correct, so he really didn’t want to share that with the others besides a quick “everyone’s excited for us” during a dinner with the team).

Seeing Shiro again was both relieving and heartbreaking. There was a new scar added to his face, something nicking his chin with a jagged ark that kissed the swell of his lower lip, and a whole new set of nightmares to keep him up at night. And worse yet was when they found out that Shiro was less compatible to Black than Keith was. Red didn’t let Allura anywhere near its pilot seat again, but Shiro put a single hand up to the passive shield, and Red let him in. It was a little weird and confusing to hear Shiro’s voice and still take directions from Keith, but Shiro seemed more than content to follow orders. In the end, just seeing him smile made Lance think that they really had a solid chance of ending the war, now that they’re all together again.

Keith and Pidge hardly left his side for the first two weeks after he woke up from the healing pods. They flew their lions closer to Red than usual while Lance and Hunk kept a polite yet defensive positioning on the outer sides. Lance hardly had much time alone with him, but he kept telling himself that it was fine as long as Shiro was in the castle-ship. Allura also ate up a lot of Shiro’s time, summoning him as well as Keith for long hours, trying to comb through the Druid’s defenses from what Shiro could remember and the half-completed hard drive that Pidge downloaded from the base where Shiro was kept. 

The Voltron team tore down armadas, liberating planets as they charged through the galaxy. They teleported left and right, fighting fleets and adding solar systems to their growing list of allies. Lance really took it upon himself to be the charming, smiling face of Voltron and do meet and greets, just like before. He’d always talk to the leaders, sometimes one alien, sometimes many diplomats from around the world. He shook hands, told tales, and at the end of the day, he’d always leave at least one communicator with the planet. 

It was one such time when Allura decided she wanted to join Lance for the first time since he began his communicator trail. Pidge was pretty badly injured, so while Hunk and Keith herded her smaller lion back to the castle just outside the planet’s atmosphere, Allura requested Lance come to the Blue Lion’s Bay and pick her up. He flew in at her request, opening his lion’s mouth to let her in.

“Well, what can I do for you, My Lady?” Lance turned around, watching Allura approach while he had his flirting tone on quite thickly. He twitched a singular eyebrow and let a pearly grin shine on his face.

Allura’s eyes rolled perfectly in their sockets before she stood directly behind his seat. “Consider it a performance review. I want to see what you do every time you visit a planet.”

Lance’s head tilted, and he looked up into her crystalline eyes with confusion. “How come?”

She almost seemed bashful at the question. “Well, I’m supposed to be a diplomat of Altea, but I’ve been so focused on fighting the Galran Empire that I’ve completely abandoned the most worthwhile part of it all: the people.”

Lance almost cooed at the sappiness of it, but he tucked it away under a soft smile. “I don’t think anyone I’ve met so far would blame you for that, ‘lura. They know what we’ve been sacrificing.” He shifted the controllers, maneuvering Blue out of its hangar.

The trip was short and sweet, and Lance added the ‘Teerockaz’ people of the Nochime system to his ever growing list. Allura was more than impressed, which made Lance preen a little that his efforts were noticed. Allura also seemed pretty satisfied, as though she’d stretched a muscle she forgotten she had. 

Eventually they fell into a routine. Instead of Allura debriefing with the Blade of Marmora, something she could trust Keith and Shiro to do themselves, or run damage diagnostics with Coran, Hunk, and Pidge, she was picked up by Lance, and they traveled down to the newly freed planets so they could invite whoever was in charge to join their growing alliance. Allura let Lance take the lead as he told tales and negotiated with leaders, and she stepped in wherever she could. With the two of them in tandem, their trips planetside had more efficient meetings and more time to get to know the aliens who lived there, something Lance had the most fun with. When they got back, he’d review the recordings from his helmet and copied down every word, compiling the information into a small database for himself. 

 

Their trip down this time was short and uneventful, some idle after-battle talk with inflated play-by-plays echoing through Lance’s dashboard while Keith was sent into a healing pod for the heavy gash on his shoulder. Lance chipped in his own two cents as he landed Blue perfectly in an intersection between the skyscraper-like housing system, careful to avoid all of the connecting walkways and the flying aliens fluttering to-and-fro to attend the wounded and find loved ones.

“Another day, another opportunity to accidentally offend an entire race.” Lance quipped, stretching his arms up above his head. He heard his spine pop. 

Allura snorted out a laugh. “You say that, but then all of the children crowd around you and demand to wear your helmet.” 

“Good thing my charm makes me the galaxy’s best babysitter. How could we survive without those skills?!” 

“I have no idea. They’re so indispensable!” Allura sarcastically replied. Keith hated that they both got into the habit of deadpan conversations, but Lance was sure it’s because he can’t read between the lines all that well.

Lance stuck his tongue out at her and hopped out, helmet hooked to the side of his thigh armor and his bayard attached to the other. He quickly grabbed a communication device, double checking that it didn’t get damaged during the battle before heading out through the walkway in Blue’s mouth. 

In Lance’s opinion, these aliens looked like fursona-sized bats, but they had an elliptical head attaching to an extremely thick, powerful lower jaw. They easily stood above five feet, and some of their heads brushed past the height of Lance’s nose. There already was a small crowd gathering around them.

“Greetings, people of this planet! I’m Lance, the Blue Paladin of Voltron, and this is Allura, Princess of Altea, and we would like to speak to whoever is in charge!” Lance said, keeping his voice a bit mellow in volume in case their hearing was as sensitive as he guessed, considering the fact that their ears were as big as a dinner plate.

Apparently, he’d guessed correctly because an alien with bright green paint markings on his skull and ears swooped with a blink of an eye, landing in front of them both before standing tall. “A paladin of Voltron! So the whispers were true!” The leader flapped his arms-slash-wings in excitement before jumping right into Lance’s personal bubble and clasping its delicate claws on the edges of his armor. The bat-like creature had some sort of tilt on the ‘I’ sounds, and the noise bounced off every building with ease. “I’m Arku Ewicheim Calul of the Youlf people! I can’t thank you enough for removing the Galra from our home, Lance and Allura!” 

“It’s what we’re here for, Arku,” Lance smiled, gently patting Arku’s shoulders in a similar fashion (he’d gotten quite good at copying customs from other species, if he did say so himself). “Can you tell us more about why the Galra decided to occupy your planet? If there’s anything you know, we’d love to hear about it.”

Allura slipped into the conversation with Arku, and, after the Youlf leader let go of Lance’s armor, the two wandered off to their archives while Lance got sidetracked and started watching the younger kids (youlflings maybe? Probably not, he never called his baby sisters ‘humanlings’) who started gliding and trying to land on Blue’s sleek metal back. Lance felt a tug at his hand and looked down to see one of the smallest ones asking insistently about his lion and why it was blue. 

Lance started his storytelling, and a crowd gathered quickly, though he had no doubt that there were plenty more people hundreds of yards away that also had an ear turned to his words. He sat right on the ground, already in the middle of an anecdote about his teammates. 

“I’m serious! The Galra’s ‘Champion’ in the battle ring was really a human! His name is Shiro, and he pilots the Red lion. He escaped the Galra, flew all the way back to our home planet, and met up with us just in time for all five of us to find Blue!” He grinned, gesturing to his lion that was directly facing him. 

He waited for the excited whispers to die down a bit, watching one of the kids dig their claws on the edges of Blue’s metal seams, but something in the sky caught his eye. A small glint of purple light blinked briefly before a cloud was blown over his line of sight. The object was entering the planet’s atmosphere.

Lance jumped up, his smile washed away. “Everyone, get to safety, NOW!” He shouted it as loudly as he could before turning around and running off to find Allura. The Youlfs jolted into action, adults using their secondary claws to grip onto weaker fliers and pull them away from the Paladin and his Lion.

He threw his helmet onto his head as he headed towards what he thought was an important building. “Guys, was that a-”

“Yeah, it was. We’re pulling Keith out of the healing pod right now. Get in your lion, ASAP.” Pidge replied.

“No can do, Pidge. I need to find Allura first.”

“What?!” Hunk almost screeched, and Lance’s heart jolted from just hearing his friend’s distressed voice. 

“I’ll be in the sky in a minute, but I need to make sure Allura’s safe.”

“She’ll be safe if we form Voltron quickly enough to stop it from terrorizing the planet's civilization.” Keith retorted. “Get to your lion, Lance.”

Lance spotted white hair through the glass window. “I’m heading that way! Just stall for me.” He flicked his personal microphone off for a moment, rushing into what looks like an old capitol building, if he had to take a guess. He sprinted up the stairs and barged through the doorway, skidding into the first door on the left. “Allura, we have a problem!” He shouted, a bit breathless. “Robeast incoming! We have to get out of here.”

Allura’s eyes widened, and she turned to Arku. “There’s more trouble arriving. Please, get to a safe area out of the city immediately and hide.” 

Lance quickly gave a warning shout before throwing the communication device in his direction, which Arku caught deftly in his claws. “I will stay long enough to reactivate the emergency siren.” Arku replied, already heading out the door and hurrying down the darkened hallway. “Good luck.”

Allura and Lance ran out the door, making a beeline towards the Blue lion. A heavy crash rocked the ground, causing both of them to lose balance on the stairs. Lance almost tripped completely, but Allura snagged his elbow and forced him upright.

“JE-SUS!!”

“RUN!”

Lance shoved his helmet on his head, and from his peripheries, he could see Allura fiddling with her earrings in order to turn on the communications. They turned the corner only to hear and feel the heavy vibrations that shook the ground beneath them. 

“Guys? It’s almost reached the city!” Pidge called, and Lance saw her lion flying over them, heading in the opposite direction. “The thing is massive, and I don’t see any obvious weak points! It doesn’t even have eyes!” 

“Just keep slowing it down as much as you can with the vines.” Shiro said into the comms. “We’re on the way.”

A heavy rumble caused Lance to trip and fall with a yelp, and the buildings around the two of them started cracking.

“Lance!” Allura wasted no time dragging him to his feet. Lance managed to stand through the adrenaline vibrating his knees, and before he could thank her, a crack from above caused him to jump in fear. They both looked up in time to watch chipped away debris fall directly towards them.

Lance didn’t even think. There have been tons of times where his lack of thinking got him in some deep trouble. There was the time where he tried out an abandoned rope swing over a creek in the woods by his house, which gave him a broken arm and a tear in his brand new jacket (and his Mamma was SO FURIOUS between her tears of relief). There was another time where he tried to take a shortcut through a neighbor’s fenced yard, only to be met with a very evil dachshund and a trip to the ER for his troubles. He caused his bigger siblings tons of grief when he got pummeled on by older kids in middle school for trying to fight battles for them. And really, his impulsiveness gave Hunk so many panicked moments, he couldn’t count them all. Not to mention all the times his snap decisions caused Voltron to trip and fall and look like a fool and make Keith and Shiro annoyed. Or when he fiddles with Pidge’s things without asking and breaking delicate instruments. Or when his mouth worked faster than his brain and irritated Allura. Or when he touched ancient castle-ship buttons without knowing what they did and making Coran fix a leak of unknown sludge in the engineering compartments of the castle.

Really, his lack of thinking pissed off so many people, but at least Allura would live to tell about it. So he shoved her as hard as he could, pushing her right under a heavy stone archway that looked stable despite the upper floors of the building falling down. He didn’t know if it was safe or not, but he doubted he’d be around to know the result of it.

The sound of stone hitting metal echoed around the inside of his helmet, and his vision turned white.

Allura stumbled, nearly falling right into a stone pillar as she sensed debris smashing against the ground behind her, along with a soft grunt. More cracking sounds rang above her, and dark brown stone broke from the archway. Her shoulder was shoved down by a force she wasn’t ready for. She did her best to roll with it in order to minimize damage, like receiving a punch, but she felt her shoulder snap and move in an unnatural way. The breath in her lungs was punched out of her, and she clung to the pillar to keep herself standing. 

The ground stopped shaking for a short amount of time, a reprieve from the collapsing infrastructure, before she realized what had happened. She turned her head to see Lance making it into the archway next to her. He didn’t look good, she realized with dawning horror. She used her good arm to reach for his body which was slumping to the floor. She shouted out an alarmed “Lance?!” as she saw him buckle to his knees. 

Lance’s vision snapped back into focus, his head pounding with a heavy noise that burned every cell in his skull, he stumbled towards the archway with two mechanical steps before he collapsed next to the pillar. He tried focusing on Allura’s face, which was now in front of him. Maybe. It might’ve been a figment of his imagination. Everything hurt, and the ringing wouldn’t stop. There were loud noises coming from his helmet, too, and he just needed a moment to stop the swaying. 

Allura crouched in front of him, checking what she could based off her limited knowledge of first-aid that she picked up from Shiro and Coran. His eyes didn’t look right, and he kept wincing as he began batting at his own helmet. She heard the ringing noise coming from the helmet, and she knew it was broken. She had her one good hand catch his, holding it and staring him down to get his attention. “I can get it off, Lance. Give me a moment.” 

There was a pause, so long that Allura couldn’t stand it, before Lance nodded, his eyes shifting in and out of focus. Definitely a head injury. Though the helmet saved his life, the audio receiver was screeching some form of broken interference, and it had to be removed before it hurt him any more. She unclasped it, pulling it off gently and laying it on the ground so she could get access to the inside of the helmet and turn off the infernal screeching. 

She remembered her own communication device. She clasped his helmet back into place on his thigh and she fiddled with her earrings in order to provide an update. “Lance is injured.” She said tersely. “Lure the robeast away from the city immediately. I’ll contact you again when we get off the ground.” Allura didn’t wait for a reply before muting her own voice channel and dropping the volume down low in case another emergency needed her attention. If she concentrated, she could hear five different voices yelling for her to reply.

Lance started heaving, and Allura jumped out of the way before she got wet with his stomach fluids. It was brief but efficient, and he swayed forward as he retched, almost landing in his sickness before Allura held his torso up. 

“Hey, Lance. Can you hear me? Please say something.” She gently leaned him against the pillar, ignoring the shaking earth as the robeast’s titanic footsteps rumbled in the distance.

Lance looked up, his face sallow from vomiting. “... ‘lura?” He asked. He looked her up and down, then out to the city road next to them. “They fell.”

Finding words hurt Lance. He couldn’t think through the pain, couldn’t pick words that were right. 'Why' and 'where' were hard. It hurt. His brain cells hurt. Lura was there. Right? It’s not ‘Lura’. It’s… His skull and ears throbbed with every pulse thumping through his veins. The light made his eyes so sore, and his brain felt like it was swelling out of his ears. He wished the feeling would stop.

Allura put her hand in his, squeezing it. “You’re right. The rocks fell. We need to move, but it will hurt.” She tried talking without confusing him. He closed his eyes to relieve the agonizing throb, and his grip was slack against hers.

“Lance, open your eyes!” She was loud, too loud, but it would hurt him more if he didn’t listen to her and she kept yelling. Lura. Allura. That’s her. It took him a minute. He opened his eyes with a wince. The hand in his started tugging him up, and she started standing. 

“We need to move.” Allura repeated, tugging his arm to punctuate her statement. He nodded. “Do you know where we are going?” She half quizzed him, half distracting him with the question while she forced him to stand. She moved her grip to his armpit, wrapping her arm around his torso before standing him up as gently as she could. Some of his weight shifted onto her broken arm and she sucked in a shudder of pain.

She couldn’t carry him with a broken arm, and she couldn’t jostle him without risking further injury to his head. She didn’t know how much more damage a human could take before the damage was permanent.

His head lolled against her shoulder, but his feet were cooperating, barely. He leaned against her and tried to find the words she wanted. “Forward?” He asked, not quite sure but knowing something important was happening, that they were in some sort of trouble.

“Yes.” The question was too abstract, so she tried something else. She needed a moment to breathe through the pain before attempting to carry him to the Blue lion. “What’s color is my hair?” She straightened him up so they both stood chest to chest. She watched wheels turning in his head. He stared right at her head, her hair pulled back into a bun to keep it out of the way. His mouth was moving, but there wasn’t any sound that came out. His left hand reached up, his gloved fingers touching the hair that framed her face. He looked distressed.

“... I’m... sorry.” He whispered, eyes tracking nothing. 

Quiznak, it broke her heart to hear that. Allura didn’t know how she could help him at all aside from a healing pod, but she smiled anyway, composing herself. “It’s alright, Lance.” She moved his hand, slinging it over her functional shoulder. “Let’s go, now.”

He leaned against her, head resting on top of hers. But he followed, and that was as much as she could ask for. Walking in a slow rhythm seemed to help him, and she, with her own injury, needed to do everything in her power to keep him standing. She held onto his belt to help drag him along, and it helped her keep him steady. Allura listened in to the communicators, but she didn’t hear anything she could help with at the moment.

The quakes in the earth were slowly moving further away, and Allura kept her eyes trained on the Blue lion, which was now just three city blocks away. 

“You need.” Lance muttered, the arm slung over her shoulder reaching to grip her waist.

“What do I need, Lance?” Allura asked. She doubted it did anything, but the more she said his name, the better she felt. It reassured her that he was still alive, and she wanted to pretend that he could understand her better if she repeated his name. 

“...” He mumbled parts of words, and his foot coordination started failing. She had to stop and give him a moment. His hand patted her waist. “Take it home.”

It could’ve been nonsense, and honestly, she should have ignored it, but it quickly clicked in place what he was trying to say.

Her response was irrational, she knew that, but she would rather that robeast come here and crush her this second than let Lance say something like that, concussion or not.

“Never!” She hissed, gripping his belt tight enough to briefly cut circulation from her fingers. “I will never leave you behind. Do you hear me?!” She turned her head to catch sight of his face, a punishing glare across her features. “You are my friend. You are family. And I will not abandon you, Lance.”

Her anger spurred a newfound energy inside her. She very nearly lifted him from his belt alone, and her strides were wide and fast. She made fast progress, almost a block and a half from adrenaline and fury alone, before she remembered why she didn’t let herself move this fast in the first place.

Lance made a noise of pain, his eyes pinched shut and his head weakly bobbing up and down before a round of dry heaving choked up his throat. 

Allura had to stop next to a chunk of debris that was at least two stories tall, quickly propping Lance between it and her arm as he folded in half. He coughed and choked out spittle and mucus, but didn’t truly vomit a second time.

She had to count to ten in her head in order to cap her anger and give Lance a moment to recover. She could kick herself over her foolishness later, but with the Blue Lion a stone’s throw away, she couldn’t waste any more time. 

“Come on, Lance. Can you walk one last time for me?” She asked gently, already wedging her shoulder underneath his arm and regaining her grip on his belt. 

He looked exhausted, and he didn’t even find words to reply to her, but he picked up a foot. She took that as permission to continue. She found their rhythm from before, and as the robeast’s steps thudded in the distance and the sounds of the lion’s gunfire filled the silent city, the two of them made it to the Blue Lion’s force-field bubble, which fell away with a soft noise. 

The Blue lion immediately dropped its head in front of the both of them. It tried to telepathically soothe its paladin, but Lance whimpered at the sensation and his knees buckled underneath him.

Allura caught him, barely. Fatigue was finally catching up with her, and her shoulder felt like it was burning from the inside-out. She watched his feet try to find solid footing while she tolerated his arm now gripping her broken shoulder.

“Blue.” Allura ground out, gritting her teeth through the pain. “Please, he’s hurt. We need to get back to the castle.”

Blue made a noise of displeasure, wanting to comfort Lance but also unable to communicate without hurting him. He stabilized one foot and then the other. He briefly whispered some sort of phrase she couldn’t understand, and he tried to walk without her.

Allura tried to smile as they shuffled up the ramp and into the cargo hold. “It’ll be alright, Blue. I’ll have to pilot you for just a tick.”

Blue rumbled a noise within Allura’s head, but it wasn’t a ‘no’. She laid him down on the floor, resting him completely flat next to a wall. He had his eyes shut and a furrowed brow held his eyelids shut. 

“I’m sorry, Lance. We’re getting help now, I promise.” Allura held his hand briefly, anxious to leave his side while he was like this. There was no secure place to strap him in; the lions were warships, not a high occupancy vehicles. She hoped that she could keep everything steady. “Two dobashes. No more.” She reassured him, but he didn’t reply.

She got up with a little difficulty, swaying a bit, but she didn’t let herself stop. She climbed the ladder with one hand limp at her side, and she sat in the pilot’s chair before turning on the communication hub for Blue. She felt the quintessence of the lion enmesh with hers, and Blue completely powered up under her request.

“-ain before it rushes us!”

“Okay, three seconds on my mark.” Keith called out, watching for some sort of opening. 

“This is Allura, coming in. I’m dropping off Lance with Coran, and then we can form Voltron.” She spoke into the monitors. 

“Allura?”

“Oh, thank God. Are you two okay?!” Pidge asked before letting out a blue streak as she dodged an incoming attack. 

“We’ll both need a healing pod, but I can step in long enough to destroy this thing.” Allura replied. She had to use her working hand to manually rest her broken arm on the armrest, and she piloted Blue one-handed as she flew it up and out of the planet’s atmosphere.

“How’s Lance?” Keith asked, tense and not in the mood for dodging answers. 

“Not good.”

“Let’s get this done as fast as possible. Allura, we figured out the timing for the beast, but with its regeneration powers, it’ll have to be a one-shot kill from Voltron’s sword.” Keith continued. 

Allura nodded. “Coran, I-”

“Already here, Princess.” He replied as she started flying into Blue’s hangar, landing as close to the Altean as she could manage.

Coran rushed in with a hovering stretcher, already halfway to moving Lance out before she could touch the ladder. He briefly checked Lance’s signs before turning to her, climbing up the ladder enough to meet her as she crouched by the opening.

“Here, take this.” He handed her a small, already opened packet. “I’ll help you focus until we can fix you up. Like a ferocious Racklehound’s rampage.”

She smiled softly, thanking him. She knocked back the medicine and centered herself.

This robeast did not enjoy its last moments, and Allura made sure of that.

 

Lance woke up from the pods just before Keith could slip out. Keith’s wound was still patching itself up, from the looks of it, but Lance didn’t have long to examine him before he was body slammed by Hunk and had the life squeezed out of him. 

“Okay, big guy! Do you want me to live in a healing pod for my whole life? I like my ribs where they are, thanks!” Lance was shouting to the heavens, and Hunk and Pidge both laughed.

“Next time, sign up for a less painful lesson on gravity and acceleration.” Pidge snarked, politely waiting for Hunk to put Lance down before she dove in for a hug of her own. 

“It’s good to see you’re okay, Lance.” Shiro said, patting his shoulder and smiling at him before Hunk demanded he eat something. 

“Thanks, Shiro.” Lance said as Hunk heaved him over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes, which caused Lance to yelp followed by immediately giving up and letting his friend carry him around. The three started walking to the dining hall, and Pidge was trailing behind to look at his face, asking Lance questions about the Youlf’s society. “Fursonas Pidge! They’re bat fursonas!!”

Shiro couldn’t help but chuckle. The three of them really did stick together like glue when the going got tough.

Allura slipped into the room after the three had left. “You just missed Lance.” Shiro stated, as though he was ignorant to her avoiding him. He was polite enough to give her the benefit of the doubt, at least.

“I’m aware.” Allura replied, walking up and standing by Shiro, the both of them were staring at Keith’s sleeping body.

“What happened while the communicators were off?”

She tensed. “It’s something I don’t want to say out loud, but I want some privacy with him.”

Shiro nodded. “And you didn’t want to overwhelm him.”

“Either he won’t remember what happened because of the concussion, or we need to talk. I wasn’t going to make him uncomfortable about it after he just woke up. That wouldn’t be fair to him.”

Shiro nodded, and the two silently waited for Keith to wake up next.

Lance hadn’t run into Allura since he woke up. It was a pretty big castle, after all, but there were patterns to everyone’s day to day tasks. Lance managed to find Coran while he was fiddling with an electrical panel and received a warm hug for his troubles. 

Eventually, he double checked the bridge and found her sitting alone in the center of the room with the star map out. She turned to the opened door, and she gave a nod in his direction. “I’m glad to see that you’re awake.” She said, waving him over.

Taking that as an invitation, he let the door shut behind him as he walked into the room. The lights were dimmed enough to see some of the smaller, dimmer galaxies and solar systems.

“Hey. What are you up to?” Lance asked, moving to sit next to her. Allura’s panels that she uses her hands on were tucked away, allowing them both to see the full array of the known universe stretched before them.

“Thinking. Feeling out some of the energies in the cosmos. Boring stuff.” Allura replied, flicking the map around as she did a brief, familiarizing scan.

Lance snorted. “Yeah, real normal, boring stuff.”

Allura gave a wry smile, but didn’t reply. She flicked through more planets, filtering and sorting through the ones with Galra-liberated territories. “You know, I have you to thank for this.” She let her fingers brush against the hologram.

“For what?” He asked. She flicked her wrist, and a splattering of green dots decorated the universe map. Some of them smudged over the red, Galra-controlled planets, and Allura started making notes to update the planets’ new conditions.

“You’re helping to bring the entire universe together. Look.” She condensed the map, letting all of it fill the front half of the room. “Every green dot is the location of a communication device you’ve distributed. Every corner has a dot near it. That’s hundreds of planets who are with us, who want to help.”

Lance really couldn’t stop staring. He didn’t think he really ended up doing that much, but in retrospect, he must have met hundreds of different alien species. 

“You made a database for them, updated our archives. You made new ones if they didn’t exist before.” Allura continued, adding a holographic screen in front of them showing off the photos Lance took with descriptions he made for each of them. There’s a sharp point in the writing where it ends in Altean and begins with English. There’s a list of leaders, global infrastructure, culture, economy, government body, even a couple of photographs. Lance hardly missed a thing. “You cared, Lance.”

He barely found the words to reply. “It wasn’t that big of a deal. We were looking for Shiro, and it was the only thing I could really do.”

Allura shook her head, placing a hand on his shoulder to make him look her in the eye. “Lance, you cataloged everything you could about them. You tell stories, and you listen to theirs. Your friendliness, your confidence, your genuine acceptance for every alien life form. You treated them all as an equal. Those are qualities the Blue Lion saw in you. They make you special. Coran or I could never replace you. I want you to know that.” 

Lance was frozen, his jaw trembling from how tense his muscles wound up. He shriveled under the intensity of her stare. “I-.” His mouth felt too dry to speak. “Thank you.” He couldn’t look her in the eye anymore, so he stared at the planets floating by them. “I know I said some messed up things when I got hit by those rocks.”

So he did remember what happened. Even if he didn’t, Allura was sure she would say the same things to him. It took them being in a life threatening situation for her to realize how neglected he felt. He wanted to convince her to save herself, to leave him behind, and she couldn’t stand that. “Just know that I would rather do anything than leave my family behind.” Allura said, he tone falling back to a more casual timbre. 

“Even if you had to smooch Lotor?” Lance asked, his voice a bit too serious, and Allura snorted out a bright, barking laugh. Lance grinned.

“I guess if that was what it took, then yes, loathe as I am to do it.” Allura replied, her face a faux seriousness.

“A true warrior’s sacrifice.” Lance pretended to fawn over Allura’s hypothetical ‘bravery’. Neither of them could hold back the laughter for long. It was an ugly wheezing, snorting, and cackling from both of them, but it was cathartic in a way. 

Lance wiped a tear from his eye. “God, oh man. That was good.” He smiled, and she nodded, her hand idly finding one of the mice and petting it. 

“Hey.” He said, and she looked up to meet his eyes. “Thanks. For that.” He pointed to the floating star map.

“It wasn’t much, but I’m glad I was able to help.” Allura replied.

“Yeah. Now if you could help save me from getting chewed out by Keith for my ‘recklessness’ in trying to make sure you didn’t get flattened by debris, that’d be great,” Lance rolled his eyes, stretching his hands up above his head to pop his shoulders. 

“Well, don’t let him run drills on you for too long. The Blue Paladin’s strongest suit is their quick decision making and confidence in battle.” Allura scratched a mouse behind the ear, and one of the other mice tried to butt in and take some of her attention away from the other.

“Alright, I’ll let Keith know he’s totally wrong and that Allura said so,” Lance smirked at the thought. 

“He wouldn’t believe you on that, but I’ll enjoy watching the extra training he’ll put you through for trying to use that excuse.” Allura flippantly replied. 

Lance groaned, standing up and heading towards the door. “You’d kiss Lotor, but you won’t back me up against Keith?! What’s this universe come to!” He shouted with a exasperated huff as the bridge doors slid closed behind him.

She laughed, picking up the mice and placing them in her lap. Before Allura could return to what she was working on, the bridge doors re-opened. “OH!” Lance skidded into view. “Don’t let me forget! I had an idea about the green lights!” 

Allura blinked her eyes, and the doors slid closed once more. 

“Only something brilliant will come out of that.” She told the mice with all the confidence in the world.

Two weeks later, Lance was standing in front of over fifty five floating screens. Each one had a familiar face on it. Some bat-like, some invisible to the naked eye, some that ranged drastically to fit in with their individualized planets. 

“One of the Galra’s strengths is its network.” Lance spoke to them all, his own podium in front of him and his large communicator resting in front of him. “Voltron can’t be everywhere at once, and the Galra have been using our limited resources against us.” He tapped his communicator. “I had, up until this point, all of the communications to through me, but that seems to be congesting us, holding us back. That’s what the Galra does, but with our numbers so small, it’s not an efficient system since I can’t monitor it perfectly. So we’re going to go about this differently.” He pressed a few buttons on his communicator, and over the next ten ticks, each of their communicators made a soft ‘ping’ noise.

“Pidge, our resident tech expert, created a program that will safely allow you all to communicate with each other. Your call will still run through my Comm, so the Galra can’t use any stolen tech and use it against you. Plus, the program uses the sensor for security measures, and if high enough amount of Galra DNA comes into contact with it, it’ll ping an emergency beacon for us. I’ll also be distributing secret code words that will be individual to each of you in case you’re being held against your will. There’s added features includi-”

Allura watched from the doorway, allowing only a sliver of light through so she could overhear Lance’s ‘conference’. 

“What are you doing?” Shiro whispered behind her, and she jumped up in shock, almost yelping as a gut reaction. Keith, Pidge, and Hunk were right behind him, all glancing between her and the cracked doorway.

“You’re totally spying on his secret meeting!” Hunk whisper shouted, pointing an accusing finger. “He’s been planning for this non stop and you’re de-secreting the meeting!”

“Shhh, Hunk! You whisper louder than a train crash!” Pidge huffed, throwing her hand over his mouth.

“We’re all excited for him, but we really need to shut up if we want to listen in,” Keith muttered, leaning his head against the door in order to hear Lance better. 

Shiro smiled, leaning in close in order to peak over Allura’s head.

“-why I picked you all in the first place. You all have fast enough intergalactic travel and powerful enough weapons to make a difference, to fight and defend a planet that is weaker. This is for defense only, only engaging if a Galra attack tries to take the fight to a protected planet. Now is your chance to join the army. If you don’t want to take this responsibility, I totally understand. I can remove you from the-”

“There’s not a chance alive you can take this from me,” Arku interrupted, his fur puffing up in pride. “I, and my people, will fight the Galra to the bitter end. We know our chances will not be large, but with every planet here that agrees, the higher that chance will grow. Freedom or Death!!”

There were others that echoed the sentiment, and the meeting broke out in cheers. Lance laughed, obviously giddy from the positive reception. 

“Perfect! I knew I could count on you guys!” He said over the cheering. He put a hand up to try and settle down the commotion. Allura held her breath. “But there’s one thing I need to ask of all of you.”

He was met with a polite silence. “You’re going to talk to each other. I want you all to chat with your nearest planetary neighbors. I want you to know their strengths, the weaknesses, their lifestyles, their cultures, personality, work schedule. Everything. We’re going to keep an eye on each other and watch each other’s backs. If something happens, I want any one of us to be able to notice and contact help.

“We’re pooling our resources together from across the universe. We’re small, but we’re growing bigger with every freed planet. We need to be able to help each other, alright?” Lance grinned.

“Like the Riqalg’s two week memory span,” the King of Elchrei, a red, string-like alien, jumped in. “We have some pretty efficient apparatuses you could use in order to improve memory space on your databanks.”

“And we have some spare warp tech to help improve travel time,” the Teerockaz leader, a four-eyed quadruped with a prehensile mouth tentacle, added. “We have no trouble with assisting in distribution between systems.”

“That sounds perfect,” Lance reassured, already busting out a pen and paper as the leaders bounced off ideas.

Shiro let out a low whistle, backing up a bit to glance at the other paladins, who all had varying grins on their faces. Pidge and Hunk were fist-bumping in celebration for their friend’s new job as the Universe’s Liaison. 

Allura had to slide the door shut before their cover was blown. She couldn’t hide her smile. She turned around and saw Coran also trying to listen in over her shoulder.

Coran smiled, a bit of pride in his chest for the man on the other side of that door. “Lance was always going to end up surprising us, wasn’t he?”


End file.
